May 26, 2006

Even The Post Office Knows Santorum Doesn't Live in Penn Hills

Before every election, the Post-Gazette routinely sends letters to the candidates seeking material for the Voters Guide. Back in March, as part of that process for the primary, the newspaper sent a letter to Rick Santorum at his home address, at least the one that he claims. Back from Penn Hills came the letter with a sticker from the U.S. Postal Service checked as "Not Deliverable As Addressed -- Unable To Forward."

That is all you need to know about the nasty dispute between the Republican Sen. Santorum and his Democratic opponent, Bob Casey Jr., in the November election. The whole thing is rooted in one inconvenient fact for Sen. Santorum: He doesn't live here anymore. [italics in original]

Although I think the P-G was a little messy in that second paragraph. The dispute is not really between Santorum and Casey on this. The thing was churned up by Ed and Erin Vecchio, two democrats in Penn Hills. It is good to see the P-G going on record with a few things:

...Ed and Erin Vecchio, tried to revive the residency issue on primary election day, which was covered by a subsequent KDKA-TV report. A radio ad for Sen. Santorum flagrantly distorts that report...

I would have gone with "lied about" instead of "flagrantly distorts" but that's just me.

Towards the end, the P-G gets to the next phase of this issue:

Mr. Casey described Sen. Santorum's claims as "weird" and "bizarre." Actually, they are beyond weird and raise serious questions about the senator's ethics that go beyond the residency question.

Exactly. The issue is no longer about where Lil Ricky spends his time (he admitted on Marty Griffin's show that it's 90% in DC, by the way). Conservatives in the area (for instance, Fred Honsberger) have been droning on about how we need to "move on" to the real issues in the campaign.

Fine. Let's talk about how Rick Santorum lied in his first negative ad. Or better yet, I'll let the P-G do it:

So what we have is the senator making untrue and outrageous comments while seeking to hide behind his wife and kids in order to get around an inconvenient fact.

We have a feeling that those who do live here may have something to say about this cowardly tactic at the November polls.